In order to increase the amount of people voting for Democrats, let alone progressive candidates. we must stop preaching to the choir and stop telling what we will do for some other group or constituency and start telling what we would do for the voters we are trying to reach. Let me elaborate.
As I listen to the reaction of the GOP and especially Trump voters, I have noticed that a lot of the messaging from the Democrats is about what we should be doing for people other than those voters. That is, we tell them we must address systemic racism, women’s rights, immigrant rights – especially undocumented workers and others that the current American system has left behind or actively seek to marginalize. Now these are issues that absolutely need to be addressed and I am not implying that they should be ignored, but they are presented in a way that seem accusatory and condescending to the voters we are trying to reach. That is, from their perspective, what we are saying is that they are the problem we are trying to fix and that our way of thinking is the way that is not racist or misogynistic or xenophobic or just plain evil. We might be seen to be saying that we are the ones doing things right so therefore they should follow our lead in who to vote for. Just think how you feel when they tell you how you must think and act to be a true American and that is how they feel when we present our arguments. No one likes being lectured by people that we perceive not to be listening to us.
Therefore, we must start telling how our ideas and policies benefit them. We must make our political pitches in light of how these policies will benefit them. When we present our ideas on inequality and racism and the like, we must show how they themselves will be helped by addressing these issues with the policies we propose. We must show who the policies of the current GOP really benefit and do so in a way that doesn’t imply they were taken advantage of by the people that got their votes. Assume they are smart enough to see on their own when the evidence is presented in a respectful and not a condescending fashion.
What I will try to do is in the following posts is present various issues in a way that might be more conducive to changing minds and votes. We must remember we “only” need to change relatively small percentages of voters’ minds in order to get to a point where we can more easily enact our agendas at the national, state and local level. Convince a small amount now and once the rest feel the benefit of our preferred policies the rest ( or enough to cement real political power) will follow. And you never know, they might show us a thing or two once we establish a respectful and not a reactionary dialogue.
